Stephen Coniglio: GWS co-captain on injuries, Making their Mark and James Hird’s influence
A candid Stephen Coniglio has opened up on the turning point which saved his career and the telling influence James Hird has had in two short months at GWS.
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It’s a date and time written in Stephen Coniglio’s journal.
September 17, 2021. Midday.
That was the month, the day and the minute that Coniglio’s relationship with football changed. That was the moment he would leave behind bad thoughts and baggage and start afresh.
A line in his life if you will.
The concept came from a book called The Answer, which is a mind bender with a preface that says: How to discover what you want from life then make it happen.
“I remembered reading the book a few years back,’’ Coniglio said.
“It’s by Allan and Barbara Pease. He was battling through mental health issues at a point in his life and the way he got out of it was he put a deadline on it, to the day and the exact minute, and he said to himself from that moment nothing else matters in terms of getting back healthy.
“So, I put a deadline down … and it felt like a cleanse.”
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Coniglio was not suffering from mental health.
His problem was playing footy (2020) and carrying injuries (2021) and the low points which became attached to his largely bouncy and jocular personality.
And always there was the one question: What’s happened to Stephen Coniglio?
He grew to hate that question and there’s not a lot of hate in Coniglio.
“He’s a great man,’’ Heath Shaw said last week.
It was relentless for two years for Coniglio and as a result his career plummeted.
He was a player with an enormous work rate, a contest-to-contest midfielder who would die to win the battle. But he was reduced to a player who was seemingly weighed down by the responsibilities of the captaincy given to him at the start of the 2020 season.
By the season’s end — and painfully documented in the Making The Mark documentary — Coniglio was a confused player, plagued by doubt and lack of performance to the point that he was axed from the team. He shed tears.
He ticked off the footage in the doco, but said he had not watched his scenes in the finished product.
“I can talk deep and be a deep person and have moments like that, but I would say 90 per cent of the day I make jokes and I’m laughing,” he said.
“I’m happy and that wasn’t pushed through (the doco), so, yeah, it was tough.”
But life has changed ahead of the 2022 season,
The doubts are gone and the body has recovered and Coniglio’s confidence has returned.
When it was suggested he “might” be out of his two-year funk, he instantly replied: “No, I am out of it.’’
But to talk about the highs of now, we must first talk about the lows of then and, he said, there were many.
“I guess the past two years for me has been a range of emotions,” he said.
“Heading into 2020 I was sky high, feeling as good as ever.
“Whatever happened, I’ve definitely had some low moments, but where am I now, that’s what I like to speak about now.”
Let’s go back fractionally first.
Early in the 2021 season, Coniglio required an ankle operation and his big toe was reconstructed and he did not return to the field until Round 18.
He would miss Rounds 19, 20, 21 and 22, before playing the final round and finals.
“The end of last year was probably my most difficult time in my career,’’ he said.
After the banged-up Giants lost to Geelong in Perth, the Giants players and staff went home. Coniglio had to complete two weeks in isolation, the first week in isolation, the second week at home with the parents.
“Quarantine is difficult,’’ he said. “Losing a final is hard enough but then, more and more you think and you ask the question: ‘What’s happened here?’”
It’s always the same question.
“I knew that was happening, but I was trying to take care of business on the field but I couldn’t get any rhythm, couldn’t get anything going in my game. So, if we’re talking about low points, that was definitely one,” he said.
So, did he find an answer?
“I’m always honest with myself in terms of life and footy, I think that’s the only way to go about it,” he said.
“Like, OK, am I not doing enough footy work? Am I not fit enough?
“My balance of life was fine. I’m a very happy person. I recently got engaged, the family’s great, Covid had its challenges for everyone, but I was pretty blessed.
“Other than not seeing my family in Perth, I’ve been pretty blessed with being able to live life. So, the answer was: ‘What am I going to do about it?’
“I’ve been somewhere near the top of my performance before, do I think I’m done or can’t do that again? No.
“I believe 110 per cent I will get back to that level, so, again, what am I going to do about it?”
First things first he had to get fit. The toe injury took until December last year to recover which meant he played late in the season in severe pain.
“My thinking at the time was, ‘yeah, I’m in pain but lots of players who come back from injury or surgery are going to be in pain’.
“For me, it was, ‘do I roll over and write off the season or, as captain of the club, do I come back and contribute in a role’.’’
Coniglio says he is not overly religious, but also says he prays every morning and night.
As he battled confidence and performance, his faith in Christ was paramount in the sense that when the walls were closing in, his faith welcomed him with open arms.
“When your routine doesn’t work, you start to question a lot of things,” he said.
“Religion has helped me. It’s been the one constant thing that’s been there for me.
“I pray every morning, every night, go to church, but not every Sunday.
“I now meditate every morning and I start off by praying.
“I find the best way to start a day is to remind yourself what we have in life and what we’re most grateful for.
“Footy might be hard, but it’s actually not that hard. There’s a lot of people going through worse things. So, for me, my faith has been that one constant.”
In quarantine, he spoke to key people in his life: Giants coach Leon Cameron, his partner, his dad, and great mate Jaeger O’Meara who plays for the Hawks.
He also adopted the revelations from The Answer.
“I put a deadline down,” he said.
Still, the damned toe would not heal.
Through the end of last season and September, October and November, Coniglio was in pain “getting out bed”.
He sought out different specialists, an osteopath for the first time and new physios.
“My footy stuff … I was thinking, ‘I’ll take care of that’. My thinking was I had to get my body right.’
Attention to detail aided recovery and, by December, Coniglio was running without pain. Coniglio felt great and Giants coaches noted the change in attitude and training performance, culminating in two promising pre-season games.
He’s bursting to play the Swans in Round 1 today and would love to lead the team out as one of three co-captains — the others being Josh Kelly and Toby Greene.
“I’ll be honest with you, the captaincy for me has at times seemed like it was heavy on me, and it may have, but I never thought of it that way,’’ he said.
“It’s never been a burden. It’s the proudest thing I’ve done in my time in football.
“I had the conversation with the club when we were going through the process and the question was asked: ‘If we do go down the co-captaincy model, will you support it?’
“I said, ‘I don’t have an issue with that whatsoever’. This is not an ego thing, this is not, ‘I need to be captain’. I purely just want to lead the club.”
Two important people in Coniglio’s footy life are Cameron, who he has spent a decade with, and James Hird, who he has spent two months with.
“If you speak to a lot of the older guys, we have huge respect for Leon,” he said.
“We can have good or hard conversations. That’s why we like him so much. His care is second to none.”
Hird joined the Giants in February in a part-time leadership role.
“The first thing about Hirdy which has impressed me so much is his availability,” he said.
“And the biggest thing I love is his mentality.
“I don’t how to encapsulate it, and maybe it’s a winning mentality or whatever it is, the chats I’ve had with him I get the feeling that if he was in my shoes I don’t think he would give a f---, he’d just go ‘bang’, say ‘no one’s stopping me, I’m going to work harder than anyone else’. Whenever he talks or gives advice, a lot of it comes back to that work ethic and that want.
“When I am playing my best footy that want and desire has always been at a premium.”
Now 28, his leadership continues to evolve.
“The No. 1 thing for me is relationships,” he said, noting that previous leaders — Luke Power and James McDonald early days and then Cal Ward and Phil Davis — had a mixture of being action-based and verbally expressive.
“I will speak in front of the group really well, but I’m more actions,” he said.
His inspiration are the “people who face adversity and look at it in the eye and come through the other way … look at Hirdy”.
“In life in general, they are the people I admire the most.
“Now, looking at my career and assessing where I’m at, I want to be one of these people.
“When I speak to the younger guys here at the Giants or guys I play with or with the community work I do, I’m constantly talking about being resilient and facing adversity.
“And this is no bigger challenge for myself to do the same thing.”
The son of an Italian from Calabria and an English mum, Coniglio is proud of his multicultural ties which includes the upcoming Stephen Coniglio Cup in Sydney’s west.
It has grown, as he has grown and as the Giants have grown in the past decade.
“It’s gone from the only thing they knew about the Giants was Israel Folau who came from rugby, and now they’re into the sport and playing the sport,” he said.
And asking: What’s happened to you Stephen Coniglio?
“Exactly (laughing) … they just think I’m injured the whole time.”
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